1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of medical instruments, and more particularly to a novel surgical instrument having a hand-operated jaw arrangement adapted to grasp or grip a variety of articles or substances. In one application, the surgical instrument is employed to facilitate the removing of animal or human tissue. In this sense, tissue is to comprise skin, cartilage or any other cellular animal growth.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
It is the conventional practice for medical practitioners, surgeons or the like to utilize instruments to remove tissue from animal or human beings. The instrument is utilized to remove tissue from an inaccessible region of the body as through a natural body opening or through a surgically provided opening within the human or animal body. Such a common type of an instrument utilizes a pair of jaws with one of the jaws being movable with respect to the other jaw. The movable jaw is to be movable within a cavity of the fixed jaw. Around the fixed jaw a cutting edge is sometimes provided and during movement of the movable jaw within the fixed jaw, the tissue located therebetween is severed and this becomes located within the cavity. The medical instrument is then removed from the body and the severed tissue removed with the instrument.
Problems and difficulties have been encountered when employing such conventional instruments because of the space required for use of the instrument. It is desirable to have the instrument as small in size and physical area as possible and as small in cross-section as possible. At the present time, a typical dimension in cross-section would be no more than 1/2 to 1 centimeter. When dealing with such small dimensions, the instrument is fragile and even though constructed of metal, will sometimes bend, break or easily fatigue so that it is subsequently damaged. Frequently, the instrument breaks and this is extremely undesirable since such instruments are relatively expensive pieces of equipment. There is also the possibility that a broken portion of the instrument could be separate from the main portion of the instrument and become lodged in the body cavity. This requires utilization of other instruments to remove the broken piece or possibly expanding the surgical procedure in order to remove broken instrument pieces.
Furthermore, the precise opening and closing of the jaw arrangement is critical and control of push or pull rods for expanding the jaws is necessary so that the surgeon has the required control of the instrument. Furthermore, it is extremely helpful to the surgeon to be able to cauterize the area in which the surgery is being performed and conventional instruments do not provide for achieving this procedure simultaneously with the withdrawal of tissue.
Problems with prior jaw arrangements are that they often do not provide suitable grasping or gripping surfaces for holding the removed tissue. Slipping or dropping of the tissue sometimes results which should be avoided.
Therefore, a long-standing need has existed to provide a surgical instrument which is constructed of a small cross-sectional size that is of high strength and construction so as to minimize the possibility of breakage. Means for cauterizing the wound or surgical area is desirable as well as providing a jaw arrangement with non-slip grasping surfaces to provide position retention of gripped tissue.